Underneath my yellow skin

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I need to talk more about weapon forms

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Today in class, my teacher mentioned that her teacher (Sifu) had been talking about the Sword Form and how important the helping hand was. He said that you could do the Sword Form with two swords instead of just one, so she suggested that to me because I’d told her that I wanted to do a Sword Form, but could not find one.

I don’t have two metal swords, but I do have a few wooden ones. I could try that or one metal and one wood. I don’t know how well the latter would work because they won’t be balanced, but it’s better than nothing. Let’s face it–I’m well on the way to talking myself into buying the double sword set from Kungfu Direct. I already watched a video reviewing the set, and the man was quite complimentary about it. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can scrounge up.

I just found out that Kungfu Direct also has deerhorn knives, but it’s under deer horn so it did not come up when I searched for deerhorn. I found them when I was browsing the non-Taiji weapons. There are also double axes, which are really cool. I am truly like a kid in a candy shop as I’m browsing the goodies (weapons).

The double saber set I want is not available. There’s another more expensive set with longer blades that is available. I’m not buying it for now, but I definitely have my eye on it. I’m also not getting the nice set of deerhorn knives yet beacuse I haven’t even started using them. And for now, the practice set will do me just fine.

In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I had a crushingly low self-esteem for much of my life. It’s a combination of having parents who did not like anything about me, belonging to two societies that believed woman and AFAB people should fit in very small boxes, and my weird brain just operating differently than ‘normal’ people’s.

The last time my mother and I talked about my medical crisis (about a week ago), my mother immediately said she was so grateful I had survived. The reason why? Because I could talk to my father when he was having one of his episodes. A month or so after my medical crisis, she said she was glad I had lived beacuse she had no one else to talk to.

Notice that neither of those answers were, “I’m glad you’re still alive so that you can live a full life.” Indeed, neither answer was about me at all. One was about her and the other was about my father. This is not a surprise, by the way, but it still hurt.

Other people talk about their parents and how much their parents love them. They take it for granted that their parents have their best interest at heart, which is something I’ve never thought at all. Sorry about the sentence structure, by the way. I know it’s awkward and ungainly, but hopefully, the message gets across.


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Even more about my one true love–martial arts weapons

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One thing I need to remind myself is that I can’t learn it all at one time. Martial art weapon forms, I mean. There are so many I want to learn, and it’s sometimes dauntting/discouraging to realize that I probably won’t learn them all in my lifetime.

Something  I want to talk about first, though. It was what I brought up previously about taking this long to feel like I’m actually not a newbie/novice with the weapons. I talked about why that might be, but one thing I did not bring up was my suspected neurodivergence.

I knew from a pretty young age that there was something wrong with me. Or rather, that I didn’t fit in with society around me. There are several reasons for it–notably, being 2nd generation Taiwanese American in a VERY white suburb in Minnesota–but one I did not figure out until relatively recently is that my brain doesn’t work the way other people’s do. I mean, I knew at a young age that I thought differently than other people, but my conclusion was that my brain was broken or that I was wrong.

As a result, I studied people around me and started mimicking them. This wasn’t a conscious decision at the time, but a way to survive in a world that was very much not made for someone like me. It’s called masking, a term I learned in the last few years as I’ve researched neurodivergency.

There are many ways that I mask because I belong in several different minority categories, plus the way I think is weird in general. I don’t see societal norms as a positive, but I have learned to keep that to myself. What do I mean by that? I mean that I never wanted to get married and have children as an example. This is something that is venerated in both of my cultures (Taiwanese and American) to a ridiculous degree. My mother drummed it into my head at a very early age that my only value as a (perceived) woman was to get married and procreate. Oh, I had to go to college and get educated, but that was as a backdrop to me meeting the man (had to abe a man, of course) of my dreams and popping out the children soon thereafter.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. My mother mentioned that she had my brother at my age when I turned twenty-six and then would not stop pushing me to have children for the next fifteen years.  Almost every time we talked on the phone, she would somehow push her agenda. One time when I had a serious boyfriend (and I had been very vocal about not wanting children) who said that maybe he wanted to have children (after initially saying he didn’t want them), my mother said that maybe we could compromise and have one child.


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I love weapons…and they love me back!

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Let’s talk more about Taiji weapons just because I can. And because I’m obsessed with them. In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how I wished I could find a forum in which I could talk about the joys of the weapons rather than the minutiae, the forms themselves, or things in that vein. It’s not that those aren’t important; they are. It’s more that I want to talk about the art rather than the martial aspects most of the time.

I am so close to having finished teaching myself the Swimming Dragon Form in Bagua, hands only. I can’t help but anticipate the next step–which is to teach myself the Swimming Dragon Form with Deerhorn Knives. Or…the form in the video I included below. It’s Sifu doing his Pa Kua Knives Form, and it’samazing. The first minute is the walking the circle meditation that my teacher taught me and that I do every day (with variations). The whole form is only two minutes and twenty-five seconds, which is hard for me to grasp.

Here’s the thing. The forms are short in general. I can’t think of one that is more than maybe five minutes (Sword Form). They’re not meant to be long; they’re just comprehensive enough to show all the things you need to know from that form. Or not even all, but enough of them.

Today, I messed around with two fans. There is an actual Double Fan Form, so I will learn it properly when I get to it. I also found out that Master Liang (my teacher’s teacher’s teacher) has a (very blurry) Double Sword Form with Tassels video that maybe I could adapt to doing without the tassels. He liked to do all his forms with tassels as he was really into the performative aspects of the forms.

The weapon forms with tassels are more dififcult because you have to keep the tassels going the whole time. That means there’s always a part of your brain focused on keeping the tassels spinning. At some point, I should probably learn a weapon with tassels as it’s an important part of our lineage.

I’m also getting used to my karambit/fan combination as I practice more and more with them. I’ve experimenting with varying the speeds because the karambit is a fast weapon (as a dagger) whereas the fan is a slower one. Not slow, but slower. I like the idea of going fast, then slow, then fast yet again. I want to mess with the tempo more because most weapon forms don’t seem to do that. It’s the playful side of me that I don’t often get to let loose.


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More on martial arts and me

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I am still working on finessing my Fan Form. At the same time, I was fucking up a few steps in the Cane Form, so I went back to watch the videos I had taken of my teacher doing the form. There is one simple movement that I forgot when I first learned the Cane Form, and while I focused on it in re-teaching myself, I forgot about it again soon after. And I’m practicing it every day! Right side one day, left side the next. I don’t know when I fogrot the movement, but now I’m committed to watching the video every day for at least a week in order to cement it in my mind.

It’s frustrating that’s it’s the easiest movement in the form, too. Well, in the top five, at any rate. I’ll see if I can describe it. Imagine facing forward with the cane held in the right hand, left hand lightly touching the right hand. I’m lunging forward with the cane pointing up in the air and to the left side of my face. It’s the next posture that I keep forgetting. In it, I step forward with my left foot and swing the cane to the right side and move it to a horizontal position.

Before I continue, here is the post from yesterday. In it, I mentioned finding the Double Fan Form, and I will include a video of one such form below.

It is so unbelievably easy, and that’s probably why I forget it. As I have established in prior posts, I tend to let my mind wander when something is easy. If it’s hard, I will focus and pay attention. But if it’s simple, then my brain tells me that I can learn it while only half paying attention.

Side note: I have recently fully realized that I am neurospicy. I have not been tested for it, but in talking with a friend about her neurospiciness, I’ve slowly come to realize that I am probably autistic. I used to suspect I had ADHD, but I  had no clue about autism because I had bought into the stereotypes of what it looked like. Young white boys who stimmed, wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye, and had no capacity for empathy.

In the last year or so, I have researched it and talked about it endlessly with my friend. She sent me a few quizzes to take, and I score firmly in the autism camp. She explained to me that especially in non-men, the symptoms were very different. Also, it’s not that autistic people don’t have empathy, indeed, they can feel it more deeply than neurotypical people. It’s just that in our society with all the rules and regulations we have about social etiquette, many neuroatypical people don’t know the “appropriate” (in quotes because it’s all constructed) way to show those feelings in society.


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